R4 (Reactions, Reviews, Reference, Redirection) #0070 · 3:25am Jan 30th, 2015
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Here are five possibly edited old reviews:
Opposites absolutely do NOT Attract! by Drizzle Quill
Shedding Anxiety by Just Horsing Around
Friendship is Optimal: All the Myriad Worlds by Eakin
Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying by l0x0r
Chess by KitsuneRisu
Opposites absolutely do NOT Attract! by Drizzle Quill
[story link] [my original review]
Ah, fun comedic metafiction. Cartoon ponies in fan fiction talking about fandoms. Lots of fun here, with Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash being total nerds at each other. I think this book is best summed up with a quote from near the beginning:
TS: “I never bothered to talk to other ponies who had read the books, I just read them and enjoyed them my own way.”
RD: “You’re boring.”
Shedding Anxiety by Just Horsing Around
[story link] [my original review]
Decent story, bit of good comedy, but nothing special. Not as good as the previous two comedies I enjoyed. Pretty good little snapshot of how Sweetie Bell and Rarity interact, subject matter aside. I think this is another one for the category of adding layers to characters, but other than that not much to take away from this. Not long enough to build up to a good punchline and the author doesn’t quite have the skill with language for fall-over funny lines. Worth the brief time you’ll spend reading it, but I don’t expect to reread it or remember it later.
Friendship is Optimal: All the Myriad Worlds by Eakin
[story link] [my original review]
Some fun thought experiments. A collection of short stories, each one exploring a single pony’s world in the Optimalverse. Some of them fall short in my opinion. Not in writing quality, this being one of the authors I really like, but a few of them don’t quite fit into the universe. Several of them are edge cases, but I can see Celestia AI building them for ponies, but at least two of them fall a bit short on the friendship part of ‘Friendship and Ponies’ of Celestia AI’s core purpose. So, good writing, but this author’s view of things in this fanfic universe doesn’t quite match up with mine. Which is hardly a deal-breaker flaw given how good the writing is. I’d love to see more of these.
For more recent chapter: Shard #173,847 (The Teacher)
Well, Friendship is Optimal: All The Myriad Worlds got a new chapter and it was less than stellar. The subject matter aside, it seemed a bit shallow. No real exploration of the character or anything. Even the chapter about the pony that did nothing but climb mountains by himself gave a us a nice character study of a certain way of life. This one was pretty much just ‘here is a pony who does things modern society vilifies, but here it is safe and okay’ and doesn’t really give any real depth to it. It really did fall into a ‘virtual reality as desire satisfaction’ trap with this chapter.
For a newer chapter: Shard #204,531 (The Storyteller)
He put up a new chapter of it and I wanted to draw attention to it. Was short, but pretty good. A world in the Friendship is Optimal universe that is a writer’s perfect world. Probably has some of the most extreme and disturbing, even to me, mental adjustments I’ve run across. Mostly just in how casual it is. The story itself is somewhat sweet and as an author I could actually see the appeal of it.
Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying by l0x0r
[story link] [my original review]
The writing is, well, a bit basic. I’d call it average. Wouldn’t surprise me if this is the author’s first real try at writing a story. Wasn’t bad enough to make me stop reading. The main problem was that there wasn’t any real depth of continuity. The story never really contradicts itself, though once or twice it came close, but more that it seems to change it’s mind about what is important from chapter to chapter, or scene to scene. One scene might get written as foreshadowing of something, then a few scenes later that thing is simply passed by as if it was background detail. The story is a pretty good example of the differences between a proper editor and a simple copyedit. It needed someone to help with the flow of the story and themes and fancy pretentious stuff like that. I enjoyed reading it, but don’t intend to come back to it when/if it gets finished.
This is actually the second half of full review.
Chess by KitsuneRisu
[story link] [my original review]
Another interesting little experiment. Dual internal monologues during a game of chess. No direct mention of anything going on, just the running thoughts of Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia as they play, yet it sets the scene quite nicely. A very interesting character study of both of them, though a little thin in places. The, not sure what to call it, lets go with ‘plot arc’ for now, anyway it isn’t quite as smooth as it could have been. The middle part has a change of direction that is a little sudden in comparison to how slow the first half build-up was. Anyway, quite a good read. I’d recommend it to just about anyone.
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