Read It Later Reviews #19 – Changeling, Magical Mystery Mistake, Sonic Rainbigot, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Get Thyselves a Room · 9:24am Jul 6th, 2015
Hello to all my new followers!
For those of you who who are new, I periodically review stories and give my own personal recommendations on them. The stories are taken from my voluminous “Read It Later” lists, or alternatively are drawn from various places around the site. I am somewhat notorious for “hating everything”, but I assure you, there are things that I love.
Just not many of them.
I have four ratings I hand out to stories:
Highly Recommended: Stories which I feel are of top-notch quality, the best of the best that the site has to offer. These are great pieces that should go at the top of your reading list.
Recommended: Very high quality stories that I found enjoyable and interesting. These are stories worth getting around to reading.
Worth Reading: These stories \ won’t feel like they were a waste of your time if you read them, but you don’t have to go out of your way to read them, either. If you like the subject matter, you’ll find them worth your time, but if you don’t, you don’t need to go hunting these down.
Not Recommended: These stories run the gamut from “this was okay but I can’t really recommend anyone spend their time on it” to “bad”.
Today’s stories:
Changeling by CCC
Magical Mystery Mistake by Palm Palette
Sonic Rainbigot by Estee
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Get Thyselves a Room by Vimbert the Unimpressive
Changeling
by CCC
Comedy, Random, Alternate Universe
1,419 wordsWhen Twilight told the Princess that one of her long-time friends was actually a changeling drone, she expected shock, she expected questions, requests for proof.
She did not expect "Yes, I know. Was that all?"
Why I added it: Present Perfect recommended it.
Review
This story is an ever-increasingly kind of ridiculous, as Twilight finds out that there are precious few real ponies in all of Equestria, with almost everyone she knows being secretly a changeling.
Almost everyone.
Fortunately, no one else has realized this either.
This story is very silly, but I feel like I’ve read it before – indeed, I’ve read other, similar stories wherein everyone was secretly a changeling as well (or at least, almost everyone), and this felt pretty similar to those, with the sheer level of ridiculousness kind of being a struggle for me to really find funny and not just… weird.
That being said, I did chuckle a few times.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you still find “everyone is secretly a changeling” type stories funny.
Magical Mystery Mistake
by Palm Palette
Comedy
4,284 wordsTwilight Sparkle was vaporized by the Elements of Harmony after attempting to fix Star Swirl the Bearded's failed spell. Distraught with grief, her friends refuse to accept Twilight's fate and turn to necromancy to bring her back.
Why I added it: It was on someone’s Read It Later shelf.
Review
Dealing with the immediate aftermath of Twilight’s disappearance, this story puts a very silly spin on it as Twilight’s friends, after failing to contact Celestia, take the obviously logical step of using black magic to bring Twilight back to life.
Too bad Twilight isn’t actually dead, and Celestia is with her.
But it isn’t like this could possibly end badly, or at least terribly awkwardly, right?
This story had a somewhat jerky quality to it; at times it was funny, but at other times it was awkwardly serious, such as them all crying over Twilight being dead. As the story went on, it sort of picked up a head of steam, and the middle of it was pretty strong, until the end also became a bit awkward, and it ended on a kind of questionable punchline.
Still, I can’t say that the story didn’t amuse me at all, and there were certainly bits in there I wanted to quote at people, which is usually a sign that a comedy story is doing its job.
Fluttershy stepped forward and scooped up a pinch of ash. It sifted through her hooves. She struggled to maintain her composure. “It can't end this way. It just can't.”
“I wish we could do something, but we c-can't,” Rarity wailed.
“Yeah, it's not like we can raise the dead!” Pinkie added. “We, uh, can't actually raise the dead, can we? Hmm...”
“I don't think even Celestia can raise the dead.” Rainbow Dash scratched her head. “Or can she?”
Rarity set Spike down. She had a wild look on her face. “She can raise the sun and the moon. I don't see why not. Spike, can you take a letter?”
Spike sniffled and frowned. He didn't share her optimism but he nodded.
“Dear Princess Celestia,
We kind-of-sort-of accidentally vaporized Twilight with the Elements of Harmony (our bad) and were wondering if perhaps, maybe you could do us an itsy-bitsy favor and bring her back from the dead?
Signed,
Your very, very, very loving subjects.”
Spike rolled up the letter and incinerated it with his dragon flame. The smoke sparkled with magic but hung in the air and went nowhere. After a while, the magic faded and the ash fell to the floor.
“It didn't work?” Spike stared at the ground with wide eyes. “But it always works! There's no way it wouldn't work unless—”
“Something's happened to Celestia too!?” Pinkie jumped in shock.
“Um...” Fluttershy's ear perked up when she heard flapping outside. She walked over and opened a window to let Owlowiscious fly in. He landed on Spike's head. “It's dark out. When did it get dark out?”
“Wasn't it sunny just five minutes ago?” Rarity asked.
Recommendation: Worth reading if the vacillation between funny and serious doesn’t bother you; if it does, you should probably skip it.
Sonic Rainbigot
by Estee
Comedy, Slice of Life
6,889 wordsAfter Rainbow Dash accidentally says the wrong two words to exactly the wrong unicorn, she learns a lesson about the power of language -- in more than one way.
Why I added it: This is Estee’s highest rated story at the moment, and Estee is a good writer.
Review
Rainbow Dash notices a knock-off version of one of Rarity’s dresses for sale in a story in Canterlot, and Miss Viton, the shop-keeper, starts poking Rainbow Dash with her horn.
Cue the (apparently racist) horn pun.
And angry mobs of unicorns.
And demands for Rainbow Dash to be removed from her position.
Et cetera.
While labelled a comedy, I don’t know that it really applies to this story very well; like many of Estee’s stories, there is an element of the comedic, mixed with an element of the serious and a little bit of darkness in the world that Estee has made. There are some chuckles in there, most especially in the pentultimate scene between Miss Viton, but the story, while it contains humor, is on the whole not really a comedy.
Like many of Estee’s stories, the greatest flaw in this piece in my mind was the slow pacing; the story was, on the whole, quite simple, but it managed to take nearly seven thousand words to tell, and the general slowness of the piece sort of stretched my attention a bit. It never quite managed to lose it, but I was not exactly enthralled through a good chunk of the story, and the extremity of the reaction felt a bit… well, extreme, and played surprisingly straight.
The story has some very reasonable content, and has a pretty decent (and surprising) payoff at the end, but it just took too long to get there.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Sad
1.055 wordsDescription
Why I added it: It was recommended to me.
Review
A griffon contemplates the inferiority of ponies in his hotel room, then returns to it after the race with Rainbow Dash in Equestria Games.
A short story told in two very short scenes, we get some sense of the protagonist, but I never really ended up being touched by the story. It was not that the protagonist was not characterized, but that he didn’t really feel like he had anything going for him; he seemed like a fairly standard prideful noble racist, and consequently, his fall didn’t really touch me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Get Thyselves a Room
by Vimbert the Unimpressive
Sex, Romance, Comedy, Random
5,183 wordsPrincess Luna is the guardian of the dreams of all the ponies in Equestria. She takes great pride and great pleasure in this duty, but when the dreams of Applejack and Rainbow Dash keep forcing themselves upon her, she finds her waking world tinted by the nightly passions of two ponies who can't quite seem to admit to each other what they want.
Why I added it: It was recommended to me.
Review
Rainbow Dash and Applejack are constantly having somewhat raunchy and increasingly ridiculous dreams about finally breaking down and getting together. This wouldn’t be a problem… if Luna did not have to see every single one of them for some reason.
This story features a Luna with an extremely archaic mode of speech, even more archaic than that found in Luna Eclipsed; indeed, it is actually very Shakespearian at times, which is a bit awkward, given that no one actually talks like a Shakespeare character, and it is very strange to see someone speaking like that conversing with people who talk like… well, people. And unfortunately, while it was supposed to be funny, I actually ended up finding it rather distracting; rather than spending time amused by the ridiculousness of the situation, it just kind of felt strange to me.
And indeed, that was a common theme throughout the story; it was frequently very over-the-top, especially in a few of the dream sequences, but for some reason the story ended up feeling it was at arm’s length, and rather than laughing at it, I just kind of stared.
I also wasn’t clear whether or not at the end of the story if the whole thing had all been in Luna’s head, which actually made me smile a bit, but in the end, the story as a whole felt a bit overwrought, and it made it hard for me to really get into it and enjoy it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
Changeling by CCC
Worth Reading
Magical Mystery Mistake by Palm Palette
Worth Reading
Sonic Rainbigot by Estee
Not Recommended
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Not Recommended
Get Thyselves a Room by Vimbert the Unimpressive
Not Recommended
Clearly, I should have planned this out better, rather than the first set of reviews you all got to see being me being a big humbug.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – Important: 65
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – High Priority: 272
Number of stories listed as Read It Later: 1618
Do you review other people fics on request or do you choose it?
3211364
I choose them. My goal is to find interesting stories to read. Indeed, full disclosure: I review almost everything I read.
I do read the recommendations of others (as noted here, several of these stories were recommended to me), but I have more stories that have been recommended to me than I've read. Still, if you're aware of a story that is worth reading, I might take a glance at it.
3211368 Jawjoe that did Queen of Queens and was interviewed for it.
The lesson I take away from this is "don't recommend stories to TD". :B
3211449 They told me not to recommend stories to TD
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3211449
Lest I cast my baleful gaze upon that which you love?
3212100
Quite so, quite so!