R4 (Reactions, Reviews, Reference, Redirection) #0074 · 4:03pm Feb 20th, 2015
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Here are five possibly edited old reviews:
Trixie vs. Roadside Assistance by Dusty the Royal Janitor
Exchangeling Perspectives by McSquirmy
Diplomacy by Other Means by Georg
Fluttermistress by Dream Whisper
Born On A Rock Farm by Aragon
Trixie vs. Roadside Assistance by Dusty the Royal Janitor
[story link] [my original review]
Silly and fun, but a bit modern for my personal taste. Lugnuts on a wagon wheel, for instance, and the crystal cell phone for calling AAA. Still, pretty good of language in several parts and how the author describes the effect of bad speakerphone hold music is quite amusing. A pretty good picture of the teeth-grinding annoyance of struggling against bureaucracy. The author says it was inspired by events he endured himself, and venting frustration by writing pony fanfic is a pretty good choice. I will say that Trixie was pretty well characterized. As much as the situation was a bit too modern it was totally believable that The Great and Powerful Trixie would react that way to things. Even to the point of not using the alicorn amulet for what she considers a trivial problem.
Exchangeling Perspectives by McSquirmy
[story link] [my original review]
Eh, this could have been a lot better. Early scene with five of the mane six felt really forced. The author trying too hard to demonstrate everyone’s personality. Comes off as really in your face instead of natural. There was one or two spelling errors that I noticed, which is strange since I normally don’t notice those at all. I tend to simply go along with the flow when reading a good story and I’ve been known to not notice entire missing words before. This was a story where lots of little things combined to make the story less than its parts. There is a really badly done overreaction from Twilight Sparkle at one point, where she panics about Princess Celestia executing her for messing up. Yeah, Twilight overreacts, but Princess Celestia wanted to reform Discord. She’s not going to execute her personal student over a slight mistake. When approaching Chrysalis at the start Twilight is incredible naive. Like, not expecting some form of deception from a shape-shifting mind-manipulating villain, level of naive.
Review has been cut quite a bit. See original for full thing.
Diplomacy by Other Means by Georg
[story link] [my original review]
Really good story. Continuing from Genealogy – (or the Mating Habits of Nocturnes Pegasi). You don’t have to read the previous stories by this author, but I would recommend at least To Sleep, Perchance to Dream and Genealogy simply to get to know the characters. I suspect this story wouldn’t be quite as good as a stand-alone simply because you don’t have any real character building.
Cut down review again, see original for full text.
Fluttermistress by Dream Whisper
[story link] [my original review]
That was a bit odd. Lots of build-up for little payoff. Very short, and you might like it better, so it’s worth a shot. Just don’t get your expectations too high if you do read it. The paragraphs could have been shorter. On my kindle they were giant walls of text longer than a page in some cases. The mental image at the end was somewhat amusing though.
Born On A Rock Farm by Aragon
[story link] [my original review]
That was a interesting one. I’m not sure it counts as a story, by the most mainstream definition anyway. Good though. Another example of how telling instead of showing can work. This brought to mind the older tradition of oral storytelling instead of written narrative. As a narrative it isn’t all that great, but taken as a myth or a parable it works pretty good. Not so much a story to believe really happened (for whatever level of that you want to assign to fanfiction set in the future about a fictional world) but to be told and spread. This isn’t easily categorized or tagged, and that alone makes it worth a read. The good writing is just the frosting on the cake. That this is the same author as Long Story Short, Things Went Down is a demonstration of a impressive range for theme and mood for writing stories. Certainly worth a read.
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