Read It Now Reviews #31 – Method Acting, Faster than Starlight, The Definitive Guide to Pony Anatomy, Kindness and the Lamb, Neither Brass nor Bold · 10:08pm Apr 7th, 2015
A pretty eclectic batch of new stories ended up driving me to write this set of reviews. A write-off story, a story about the truth about teleportation, a story about silly pony anatomical terms, a story about Fluttershy meeting Jesus, and a story about the season 5 premier is a pretty varied batch of stories.
Today’s stories:
Method Acting by Pascoite
Faster than Starlight by Trick Question
The Definitive Guide to Pony Anatomy – Starring Princess Celestia and Princes Luna by Pen Mightier
Kindness and the Lamb by Architect
Neither Brass nor Bold by JohnPerry
Method Acting
by Pascoite
Sad, Slice of Life
2,654 wordsA phoenix seeking out a good nesting place finds an unexpected connection with the ponies living nearby. Unexpected for her, at least—they've been looking for just this phoenix.
Why I added it: It won third place in the “All In” write-off.
Review
Told from the point of view of the phoenix in the story, this story draws heavily on the idea that as immortal birds, phoenixes have a very poor sense of time, but at the same time, the course of the story seems to indicate that despite that, it isn’t nearly as poor as the phoenix believes – it can keep track of the days, albeit with difficulty, and while an animal, it can understand the ponies and wants to be kind towards them.
Of course, there seems to be something more going on with the family of rock farmers she is observing, as they take a particular interest in her…
This story has a strong ending, and it does a good job of tying together all the plot threads, but even at its extremely short length, it still feels like it drags a bit in the middle – the added detail is alright, but the flight around the area felt a bit extraneous, and it shows in a story this short and otherwise tightly-bound.
Recommendation: Worth Reading for the reveal.
Faster than Starlight
by Trick Question
Sad, Dark
4,369 wordsPrincess Twilight Sparkle meets with Princess Celestia to discuss her encounter with Celestia's former student, Starlight Glimmer. During the encounter, Twilight noticed something strange that Starlight didn't do, despite her powerful command of magical spells—something that Twilight can't make sense of.
Twilight wants to know why, but Princess Celestia doesn't want to tell her.
By the end of their meeting, Twilight Sparkle will be confronted by something even more terrible than a deadly nemesis: the Truth.
Why I added it: Trick Question likes writing stories with big ideas.
Review
Princess Celestia reveals the horrifying truth about how teleportation works to Princess Twilight. In the process, Celestia reveals that she is crazy, and Twilight takes neither revelation particularly well.
I see Trick Question promptly absconded with my idea about Starlight Glimmer being Princess Celestia's previous, previous student, not that I was expecting to keep that cat in the bag.
I instantly cottoned onto where the story was going because this wasn’t the first time I’ve seen the idea; it is the first time I’ve seen it in the MLP-verse, but unfortunately, I think this story had some issues.
The first, and largest, issue is that the spell in the story doesn’t really make any sense; there is no reason why the spell would work that way. It is dark for the sake of being dark, rather than for the sake of logic.
The core of the story is about an explanation of what the teleportation spell does. I feel like the writer had heard about this particular debate, but misunderstood why this is a thing:
It is not-infrequently posited that teleportation is, in fact, the destruction of the original and the creation of an exact duplicate. However, the reason why this is questioned is, typically, that the original must be destroyed in order to create the duplicate, because the only way to get the information out of the original would be to scan it atom by atom, destructively, and then use that information to create a double. Alternatively, it could be because it needs those atoms to send along and create the duplicate, and rips them apart to transmit them more easily.
A form of teleportation which brought the original as a whole to the new target, then, wouldn’t be destructive, but something like the Star Trek teleporter might well be.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the writer understood this aspect of why this was a thing, as the explanation for why the spell works the way it does in the story is… because it does. It thus seems like tragedy for the sake of tragedy. There is no reason for the spell to destroy the original, as it obviously isn't required for making the copy, and thus it feels rather silly.
The second problem is that it puts Celestia pretty far out of character, as a madmare, but also with some subtle wrongness in her speech patterns – calling Twilight princess oddly, as well as disclaiming her friendship with Twilight, both of which feel very discordant.
I was also slightly bothered by the idea that Twilight is weaker than Starlight Glimmer. From what we saw from the episode itself, that was not so – when they go head to head, Starlight loses and is bitter about not being able to cast the spell that Twilight can cast despite having tried for years. This is more of a quibble than anything else, but it ended up tweaking me a bit because that's pretty much the opposite of what we saw in the show.
All in all, I wasn’t overly fond of this – while the underlying idea is potentially interesting, I felt like there were a lot of issues with the execution which ended up making the thing fall down for me. The spell seemed to work the way it did for the sake of tragedy, Celestia was made into a crazy person for no apparent reason (especially given that there are actually good arguments for why it wouldn't be a big deal to some people, thus also strawmanning the counter-argument), and I didn't really end up being all that fond of the premise.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Definitive Guide to Pony Anatomy – Starring Princess Celestia and Princess Luna
by Pen Mightier
Comedy, Slice of Life, Human, Meta
2,781 wordsShould you find yourself a visitor to Equestria, it would benefit you to be able to tell a pony's rubby-tubby from his or her boop-button and fuzzy-wuzzy. Herein is your definitive guide, written by an expert upon the science. Published with the royal approval of Her Royal Majesty Princess Luna and the silent tolerance of Her Royal Majesty Princess Celestia.
Published by the Royal Canterlot Publishing House for the Royal Equestrian Diplomatic Mission to Earth. For human audiences only. No alicorns (or humans) were harmed in the making of this guide.
Why I added it: It was featured, and I’ve written a story which also used silly anatomical terminology.
Review
Some of you might remember my story, Proper Anatomical Terminology, which made use of one of the “silly pony anatomy” images, and had Twilight using “Proper Anatomical Terminology” while writing a scientific paper about "Foreplay and Copulation Between An Alicorn and a Pegasus Using Proper Anatomical Terminology".
Pen Mightier’s story uses the same basic idea of using “proper anatomical terminology”, but otherwise, their story is utterly different. I was looking forward to seeing someone else’s take on it (and theirs, unlike mine, is not dirty), but ended up a bit disappointed.
The Definitive Guide to Pony Anatomy is not, in fact, a guide, but a narrative. The narrator describes Princess Celestia and Princess Luna using “proper anatomical terminology” while dictating the story to “Thin Air” (AKA no one, AKA the audience). The whole story is about breaking the fourth wall while interacting with the princesses, with Princess Celestia being his blushing waifu as her anatomy is discussed.
Having someone use ridiculous terminology to describe stuff can be funny, but there’s a certain sort of rule to it: the person who is doing it usually has to not recognize that they’re being ridiculous. Naked Singularity uses this to great effect in its passages about sex; Twilight describes sex using scientific analogies, and it is funny because the analogies are terrible and Twilight is completely earnest. Twilight never winks to the audience, and a big part of the humor is schadenfreude.
I felt like The Definitive Guide to Pony Anatomy ended up missing out on this. The narrator is winking at the audience the whole time, and I think that makes it a lot less funny because the story is too self-aware. Measuring cuddles in “micro-Lunas” and giving Luna a high-five just feels awkward, and none of the characters are in-character – Celestia is reduced to blushing by the narrator’s behavior, and Luna doesn’t act like Luna at all.
In all fairness, though, there was one thing in this story that did make me laugh out loud:
Luna's flank-label is that of a moon, signifying her to be the local deity of the moon. My Lady Princess Celestia's is that of the sun, signifying her to be really, really hot.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Kindness and the Lamb
by Architect
Crossover, Sad, Alternate Universe, Human, Christian Literature
1,792 wordsPassover has come and gone, and all that remains is the trial before the Crucifixion. Jesus is in the temple gardens, praying for strength for the coming ordeal, when a stray thought turns into a prayer for some kind of comfort before he leaves. That prayer is answered not in the spirit, but the flesh, as a certain yellow pegasus pays him a rather unusual visit.
In honor of Good Friday.
Why I added it: Someone noted that this story had earned a large number of drive-by downvotes, and “Fluttershy meets Jesus” is an idea I haven’t seen in a story before.
Review
I was honestly pretty disappointed by this. This was obviously written with a Christian audience in mind, but it… really is mostly just following the theme of “Jesus talks to someone and converts them to Christianity”. But this lacks the cleverness of some of Jesus’s parables, and was mostly just a straightforward conversion story.
The fundamental question is: why would Fluttershy convert to Christianity? What is it that Jesus said in here which would cause her to do so?
This strikes me as a common Christian fantasy, something I see in things like Chick Tracts - someone is told about the glory of God and suddenly they convert to Christianity. But... that's not really how it generally works in real life. I mean, sure, some folks will believe anything you tell them, but if you walk up to a Christian and tell them about the glory of Allah or Shiva or the ways of the Buddhists, are they likely to convert on the spot?
Probably not. So why is this such a common fantasy?
I suspect it has to do with world-view. They believe, and they think that simply by telling someone else something, that someone else will inevitably believe. But conversion isn't so simple.
Fluttershy, here, is just converted without much consideration about what would drive her to such. There's no clear rationale or reason behind her sudden conversion; she talks to him, and just believes him. What was it that appealed to her so strongly? The story doesn't really say.
Fluttershy trying to save Jesus by dragging him off bodily is reasonable enough, but the rest of it fell kind of flat for me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Neither Brass nor Bold
by JohnPerry
Dark, Slice of Life
1,282 wordsShall I speak of our town unnamed?
Why I added it: The summary grabbed me.
Review
This story has two parts: it starts off with a (rather mediocre) song written by one of the villagers. It has some good bits to it, but it suffers in many parts… and yet, that seems to be entirely intentional. It was written by one of the villagers, after all, and while his talent was in music, here, he is merely adequate.
But then he realizes the problem – he wants to share that song with the village, but he can’t, because that would elevate him above others and mark him as special, even when his flank says he is equal.
This is a story about the fundamental paradox of the creepy cult of equality presented in the season 5 premier, and how what drives ponies to want to be in a place where everyone is equal may well be driven by one’s own personal unfulfilled need for acknowledgement. It is quite short, but does a decent enough job at highlighting what it is trying to highlight, though it didn't exactly knock my socks off. Still, if the subject matter interests you, you might like it.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
Method Acting by Pascoite
Worth Reading
Faster than Starlight by Trick Question
Not Recommended
The Definitive Guide to Pony Analogy – Starring Princess Celestia and Princes Luna by Pen Mightier
Not Recommended
Kindness and the Lamb by Architect
Not Recommended
Neither Brass nor Bold by JohnPerry
Worth Reading
Now, to work on Mistletrapped.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – Important: 65
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – High Priority: 231
Number of stories listed as Read It Later: 1551
Here's a better one.
2957895
I shall take a look.
Yeah, that is pretty funny.
The problem I'm seeing (my fault of course, not the readers') is that readers are attaching too tightly to the idea, rather than to the story being told around it. This story isn't actually supposed to be about teleportation. That's just a plot device. Heh. Plot device.
When ponies see the story as being about that, they start to quibble over whether they agree with headcanon, philosophy, etc. I don't agree that destructive teleport is unrealistic at all. It's very realistic that a Science! scan would leave the subject unharmed, and would take time to finish before destructing the original, long past the point where she is identical to the copy.
I also don't agree with your impression that Starlight is less powerful than Twilight. She ran away because an entire mob was chasing after her. That wasn't remotely one-on-one. She ripped all of Twilight Sparkle's magic out of her in three seconds flat, and heavily cursed her to boot. It doesn't look to me like she's the weaker one. Twilight might be able to put up a protective shield strong enough to block Starlight's attack, but there's more to power than a single counter.
Also also I didn't mean to steal your idea!
I thought you were only talking about Sunset and Twilight, b/c I didn't have Starlight Glimmer stuck in my mind at the time (didn't even know her name then). But although it seems to be unpopular, I agree she'd have to have been Celestia's student, because she's too powerful, and for the reasons you outlined in your thing that I did not realize I stole from totally.
EDIT: for the above paragraph I might misremember stuff because drugs. I am not intentionally lying if it is false.
Also also also I am surprised you read crazy wolf stories even though they are never as good as the first one for you! But thank you for suffering through the read and reviewing!
The more I review my story, the less I like about it. Imma take it down in 24 hours and recycle.
I have post-mortem'd the biggest brain reason for bad story, however, and it's a useful lesson I should have seen coming. I'll post about it on my blog tomorrow.
Yeah, I just read Brass Nor Bold today and found it good. :D
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I also recommend the RCL-featured Appletheosis. It's not Jesus that the ponies talk to, but it's just as earnestly Christian, and enriched by that perspective (says a pagan).
I'll have to check out the one linked above.
I think with some Christians, it's a sort of "but our religion is so perfect and awesome! How could anyone not believe after gazing upon its glory?" But it doesn't look that way to anyone on the outside. It's why some think the drive-by Bible verse is an effective conversion tactic, I think.
Wow, Dragon Tails! It has been ages since I heard anything about that webcomic.
2958005
If I was actually worried about people using it, I wouldn't have mentioned it in public at all.
Besides, knowing that people got upset over it is useful data for my own plans.
Actually, I'm going to do it anyway. Maybe.
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Honestly, I think the same mentality pervades about a lot of beliefs, like gun control folks and anti-gun control folks, and abortion, and global warming, and... well, everything really.
2959198
Alas, the website is defunct. I should try and find an archive somewhere and burn the whole thing to DVD so I have a copy.
2959198
Don't you mean that hot show on PBS? Er, that show on PBS? That's what I said it was "that show on PBS" which was exactly what was said just now. It's a show.
2960076
That "maybe" tells me that you are not, in fact, secretly Bad Horse.
This is unfortunate, as he also seems to live bizarrely close to me. Bad Horse, Morning Sun, and I should get together and read the Hoof of Argon or something.
Also also also also also, your blog page has a super-duper-annoying problem.
The problem is it takes forever to load, and scrolling is jumpy. And it frequently stops everything in the browser. And there's a reason, and it's something you can fix.
The reason for the problem is that Fimfiction does not create thumbs for images. Ever. Anywhere. It simply resizes them after loading them. Consider this gem:
https://www.fimfiction-static.net/images/story_images/61941.png?1352317282
This image is one you link to in your scrollbar, and why not? It's one right here on fimfiction, right? It's only 1.68 MB, right?
Wrong.
The file is less than 2 MB; but in order to process the file for resizing, your browser has to unpack the entire thing to its actual uncompressed size of more than 300 MB. Seriously it's like a third of a gigabyte for a single thumbnail. You can see how this will add up.
Now this one might be forgiven, because it's a direct link to Fimfiction story image, and it's that author's fault more than yours (and somepony should really tell that author if they do not hate them, someone other than me because I am too busy at the moment and am about to go offline after superlongpost). But your reviews are filled with large images, and much worse than this, your sidebar is simply brimming with enormous images which are then resized to tiny sizes.
One of the things I do before linking to an image is GIS it to see if I can find a reasonable size, somewhere in the 400 to 1000 pel range for largest dimension. I almost always can, and if I can, I use the smaller size. If I can't, I resize the image and upload it to my server.
For some ponies your blog page isn't even going to load. I have broadband and an amazing system. Whoever's story that is in my example (it's in your sidebar and is one of many in your sidebar which slows down everything), their image is in excess of 10000 by 10000 pixels, and that is simply redonkulous. First off, there is no reason to ever upload an image in excess of 250 by 400, because that's the largest size it'll get to be on your story page. I suppose if you want other ponies to link to it and see expanded size, but even then, one should limit it to 1000 or so at most. You'll note I resize all of my story images in Irfanview to 250 by 400 or less before uploading each to my story page. I haven't looked at your Mistletrapped graphic (I can't easily scroll through your blog to see updates, because of this reason) but Imma guess it's freaking ginormous and doesn't need to be quite so ginormous. Maybe I am not correct about the Mistletrapped graphic in which case never mind on that one.
But, yes. You need to link to smaller images, or your blog will be unreadable for ponies without broadband or ponies with slow systems, and some ponies with neither problem won't read it either due to annoyance at stuttering pagination. I am surprised nopony has told you this thing, so I am telling you this thing.
And if you want ponies to be able to see the enormous version of pretty image, you can either tell them to GIS for the bigger size, or assume they're not dumb and can figure that out, or post a link to the full-size image after the smaller one.
EDIT: It may in fact only be one or two images. Maybe even only the one I used as example. But you have to dig to find out, b/c I do not have that much time.
2960361 There used to be a webcomic called Dragon Tails. TD used an image from it on the Faster than Starlight review.
Soge, ruiner of jokes since 19XX
FYI, it does actually create thumbnails. If you look at the image file for the story page, you'll find it has been resized. If you follow the link, it won't be resized and can be any size. I always use the full sized image (pretty much blindly), which sometimes results in... well, problems when I don't realize that they stick a 10,000 x 10,000 image in.
Though honestly, the site CLAIMS it won't allow anything larger than 1 MB. I wonder how that one snuck past...
I substituted a smaller-sized file for both it and Mistletrapped (Mistletrapped wasn't as ridiculous, but it was still far larger than it needed to be).
It was worse in the past, when I had a like, 10 MB gif being thumbed over in the past blog entries.
Anyway, thanks for the catch. I'll keep an eye out for that more in the future.
2957895 that story was... really boring
like, unbearably so
2961679 FYI: FiMFic apparently moved their image hosting from "fimfiction-static.net" to "static.fimfiction.net", so this is no longer an issue on a bunch of your posts simply because the images don't load at all. They're all covers of the stories being reviewed, so it's not really a problem since they're findable through links, but I was pleased to discover that all the busted images I've been seeing around aren't somehow my fault.
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Yeah, I noticed. I'm not sure if it is worth going back through the old reviews and fixing them or not; it is a lot of reviews to go through to do it. Though maybe I could automate it.