Read It Now Reviews #15 – Save the Records, Call the Stars Home, Aftermath, The Serene Forgetting, Love Letters for a Girl I Hate · 9:08pm Jan 29th, 2015
I ended up looking at a number of serious stories for the More Most Dangerous Game contest, but I wasn’t terribly happy with them on the whole; some of them stumbled at the end, while others never really felt like they took off to begin with. And then, for something completely different, I read a set of short stories which parodied Skyrim and had nothing to do with the contest at all.
Also, in case you missed it, I wrote a recommendation blog last night about a short coda/sequel Horizon wrote to Ruin Value called Ruin Value Meal. If you read Ruin Value, and liked it, Horizon’s piece will very likely make you smile. If you haven’t read Ruin Value yet, then you should go read it, then go and read what Horizon wrote afterwards.
Today’s stories:
Save the Records by TheBandBrony
Call the Stars Home by PropMaster
Aftermath by Murder Knight
The Serene Forgetting by Avox
Love Letters for a Girl I Hate by GaPJaxie, which consists of three short stories:
- Glory
- Freedom
- Mirth
Save the Records
by TheBandBrony
Gore, Slice of Life, Alternate UniverseThe world ends, right? Of course it did. But who in the great struggle to survive the end of ponykind remembered to save the music?
Why I added it: Soge recommended it.
Review
This is a weird story.
The story is written as a long monologue about music and records, and how no one bothered to save them when the bombs fell – but how music lived on regardless, in bits and pieces, in the few lucky records that survived, and why that’s important. I got a voice in my head for the guy – something of a smooth jazz type, a cool cat from the 40s – but I wasn’t terribly enamored with the piece. It wasn’t a bad idea, focusing on some specific thing – in this case, music – and then writing a story around it, and I wanted to like it, but in the end I never really ended up feeling attached to any of it. Soge really liked it, but it just didn’t end up connecting with me.
The story comes with a song in its description, and I do recommend putting it on while you read the story; it may help to better connect you to the piece.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Call the Stars Home
by PropMaster
Adventure, HumanWho doesn’t want to be remembered?
Why I added it: Soge thought that the start was “amazing”, even if he wasn’t fond of the ending.
Review
I don’t have quite such high praise for the start, nor do I damn the ending quite as much, but my impression was fairly similar to Soge’s, in that this story wasn’t quite there.
It starts with Lyra breaking into Twilight’s new library in the middle of the night. Sure, it is a library, but, well, any time you’re using a grappling hook to read someone’s books, things are a bit weird. Twilight is understandably annoyed, but not too worried – Lyra is crazy, but not evil.
This Lyra is an archaeologist, and after telling Twilight a few creation myths, reveals that they’ve found an ancient obelisk, covered with gold to last through the ages, which contained a number of symbols, as well as a disk indicating where they could find something. And thus, Twilight reaches up into the heavens to find it, a last message from mankind.
The start of this story is solid enough, but the ending was a bit sappy, and I didn’t really feel like the whole “humans killing themselves to save the world” bit made any sense at all – why wouldn’t they at least try to get off-planet before they did whatever it was that they did?
I much preferred Dear Sedna and the Voyager probe story whose name I forgot to this one; sending a message across the ages is cool, but I didn’t really fell like this did it for me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Aftermath
by Murder Knight
Dark, Alternate UniverseWhat does one do when all is lost? Persevere.
Why I added it: jmj liked it.
Review
I didn’t, though. This is fundamentally a war story and its immediate aftermath, with Equestria and all the lands and people of the world lying in ruins after a war with modern weapons, including bioweapons. There isn’t really anything to recommend it over other such stories, and there’s really no particular reason why it has to involve ponies – the presence of ponies in the story is largely meaningless, and not much use is made of the setting in the end. Nothing here really stands out as being hugely distinctive, and the whole thing feels a bit derivative in the end.
This is a not-infrequent problem I’ve seen in stories like this in the past; when you write a story like this, you have to realize that these sorts of stories have been written before many, many times. War is hell is not a new message; if you want us to really bond with your story, you need to present it to us in a new and interesting manner. Get us to bond with a character or a setting; show us a new take on things. Having seen so many of these, most of them slide off of me like water off a duck’s back.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Serene Forgetting
by Avox
Tragedy, Dark, Alternate UniverseAlone within the snow-laden forest, the mare lies still as stone, cradling her only foal.
Why I added it: Its description.
Review
This is an alternate universe where there was a war between Celestia and Luna which ruined the world and resulted in the deaths of most of the pony populace. In the end, Celestia dies, Luna goes crazy and decides to kill everyone because she has nothing left.
The end.
After reading the story, I noticed that the writer themselves more or less pointed out some issues with the story, but honestly I felt that the obfuscation was fine (though I’ll admit that I thought that Luna’s lover was Sombra, not Starswirl, as it lent much more of an air of malevolence to his actions, as well as those of Luna, as we know that Sombra is a bad guy).
My main problem with it was, again, that I’ve seen this story before – more than once. In fact, I believe I’ve read this story before with Luna and Celestia, let alone other, similar figures. I actually thought that the writing style overall was alright, but the fact that it didn’t really do anything new bothered me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Love Letter for a Girl I Hate
by GaPJaxie
Comedy, Crossover, AdventureA collection of Skyrim/MLP crossover fics and short stories, showing three different takes on one of the Mane 6 as the Dragonborn.
Why I added it: GaPJaxie is a good writer.
Review
These stories are send-ups of player behavior in the game of Skyrim, viewed through the eyes of pony protagonists. That the protagonists are ponies is mostly irrelevant (apart from Rainbow Dash, at any rate), and Twilight in particular is not hugely Twilight-esque, but the whole thing works anyway. The comedy of the stories mostly arises not from jokes, but the sheer ridiculousness of the stories in question, with game logic contrasted with real life logic. Each clocks in at about 3,000 words long, and are all exactly the right length for what they are doing.
Glory: Rainbow Dash wanders in, being a protagonist, eating random food off the table and making a nuisance of herself, as well as trying to collect on a month-old bounty she had been too lazy to collect up until that point, before going back out to beat up a random dragon. The touch of the ridiculous leeway given to the protagonist, combined with the action of the battle with the dragon, ends up making this short story work pretty well.
Freedom: A serious examination of the ridiculousness of Twilight completing all of the content in Skyrim with the same character, and how ridiculous that character would be in the eyes of the rest of the world with upteen many titles and lovers who seemingly don’t realize each other exist. This is a decent story, and it works surprisingly well in its seriousness, as well as the lampshading of the protagonist’s uniqueness.
Mirth: This is a far less serious look at the ridiculousness of being a player character in a game like Skyrim and doing everything (and everyone) at the same time and being a complete, total, and utter sociopath who clearly is the hero. Really. She is saving the world, after all.
All in all, these stories made me smile, but Rarity’s story, Mirth, made me laugh out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of what was going on, and the ending of it was truly a thing of beauty and was by far the best part of it. If you have ever played a roleplaying game of any sort on the computer, you will find this funny; you need not have played Skyrim to enjoy these pieces.
Recommendation: Glory and Freedom are Worth Reading, Mirth is Highly Recommended.
Summary
Save the Records by TheBandBrony
Not Recommended
Call the Stars Home by PropMaster
Not Recommended
Aftermath by Murder Knight
Not Recommended
The Serene Forgetting by Avox
Not Recommended
Love Letters for a Girl I Hate by GaPJaxie, which consists of three short stories:
- Glory
Worth Reading
- Freedom
Worth Reading
- Mirth
Highly Recommended
I’m pretty near to the end of the stories I’m going to read for the More Most Dangerous Game; I have a full additional set of reviews set up (originally Read It Now #15, but now pushed back to #16 to promote GaPJaxie’s new story, which you guys should all read); you will get another full set of reviews of More Most Dangerous Game stories tomorrow.
I hope you enjoy Mirth as much as I did; the collection only went up yesterday, and I hope that more folks can come to enjoy it. And I hope that those of you who enjoyed my story Ruin Value also enjoy Horizon’s Ruin Value Meal
Number of stories still listed as "Read It Later - Recommended": 189
Number of stories listed as “Read It Later”: 1547
Huh. I had thought Twilight was bouncing between save states in "Freedom." Hence the discussion of choosing which house one wants to live in; from a diegetic perspective, they would be parallel timelines that she can move between, because she's a dragon. Guess I was thinking a bit too meta.
2756143
That's what I was thinking at first, too, but at the end her little speech to her final companion seemed to imply that she was all of those things simultaneously, as he could not deny it.
I gave Love Letters for a Girl I Hate a pass, even though I like GaPJaxie, because I've never played Skyrim. But if knowledge of Skyrim isn't necessary to get the jokes I'll give it a read.
2756225
If you have general knowledge of roleplaying game tropes, that's enough; I've played a marginal amount of Skyrim, but I didn't really know anything about any of the groups or people named in the story and I still enjoyed it.
Meh, it's really not surprising that my story isn't really favored here. The 'War is Hell' message is really nothing new. The low wordcount wasn't able to expand the characters enough. Ah well, I'll try harder for new stories. Thanks for the review.
2756806
You're welcome!
2756225 There is one or two references to specific Skyrim bugs, but most of it should be understandable from the context of the story, as long as you've played modern RPGs before.
Here's one of the Skyrim specific bug referenced:
I had originally given Love Letters a pass till I read this review, and my goodness was it a solid recommendation.
2763230
I know, right? This is why reviews are so important! Sometimes stories are way better than they seem like they have any right to be.
And alas, sometimes they are way worse.