Read It Now Reviews #48 – Temporal Irregu-Rarity; Sleeping Your Way to the Top; Goodbye, Crusaders; All the Time in the World; Chuckle · 11:44pm Aug 28th, 2015
Tons of new stories that managed to draw my eye came out in the last week or so, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on them with you folks.
Today’s stories:
Temporal Irregu-Rarity by Pineta
Sleeping Your Way to the Top by –TGM–
Goodbye, Crusaders by HalfTangible
All the Time in the World by Adda Le Blue
Chuckle by Obselesence
Temporal Irregu-Rarity
by Pineta
Comedy, Slice of Life
1,880 wordsRarity is visited by herself from the future. She has an extremely important message.
Why I added it: It was in the last writeoff.
Review
Twilight Sparkle teaches Rarity the time spell in order to test the experiment that time travel actually involves travelling across parallel universes, as otherwise it would be possible to create paradoxes (well, unless the universe prevents you from doing anything paradoxical…)
9. Plan of Action. We wait two minutes. If nothing happens, go to step 10. If we are visited by a Future Rarity, go to step 11.
10. Rarity travels two minutes back in time to greet herself. This is impossible as she didn't see herself two minutes ago.
11. Rarity does not travel back in time to greet herself. This is impossible as we just saw her.
Too bad Rarity from the future DOES show up, with some very important advice for Rarity, completely ruining the experiment…
While this wasn’t bad, it was kind of one-note, and it (intentionally) hewed pretty closely to Its About Time, which didn’t really do much for me. There’s a few little things in there that are cute, but on the whole, I can’t really recommend it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you really like jokefics.
Sleeping Your Way to the Top
by –TGM-
Sex, Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life
4,115 wordsAfter a sudden realization about how Shining Armor became a captain in the Royal Guard, Rainbow Dash hatches an insidious plot to become Captain of the Wonderbolts by following in his hoofsteps in the only appropriate manner...
By sleeping with a Princess, of course!
Why I added it: It was featured, and the premise of promotion by sleeping with the Princesses amuses me more than it should.
Review
Cadance and Shining Armor come to town for a visit, and Twilight decides it would be cool for her friends to come along and hang out with them, make it a social occasion rather than just the three of them. Alas, Rainbow Dash is the only one who can come, and she doesn’t even really want to.
After tuning out most of the conversation, Rainbow Dash learns that Shining Armor made Captain of the Royal Guard in two years while dating Cadance, and comes to the conclusion that the best way to quickly become Captain of the Wonderbolts is to sleep her way to the top with a princess.
Like, you know, Twilight.
Who is sitting right there next to her.
But I’m sure her change of heart (and coaching by Cadance) is all straight from the heart, right?
This sounds like it would have been hilarious. Alas, I was more amused by the idea of the story than I was the story itself. It felt like it was trying way too hard to be funny. The characters were all extremely exaggerated, but the net result was that it just felt like the thing was forced. I’ve seen other stories – like the story where Rainbow Dash tried to marry Twilight for the tax benefits – which pulled off the premise a lot better. Here, the whole thing felt far too telegraphed, and the whole thing just didn’t hold up as well as it might have. Added to it, the story took a while to really get to the joke, and there were all these little random bits (like Spike walking out with lipstick and a dress) which just felt like they were thrown in rather than part of a coherent whole.
There were a couple of funny moments in there – Cadance’s prompting of Rainbow Dash was a particular highlight – but on the whole the story just did not deliver on the premise as well as I was hoping it would.
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Goodbye, Crusaders
by HalfTangible
Tragedy, Sad, Alternate Universe
2,723 wordsTirek gave Twilight a choice: give up her magic, or lose her friends. Twilight chose the latter.
Now, the last of the rebellion has been brought to justice. And Twilight is their final judge, juror, and executioner.
She never expected that the Crusaders would still be alive.
Why I added it: It was featured
Review
The princesses and Twilight’s friends are all dead. Some ponies decided that Twilight secretly overthrew the old world order – and killed her friends – and started a rebellion. At long last, Twilight has brought it to heel, after it killed thousands of ponies, and weakened Equestria towards invasion by others.
And now she has the ringleaders before her – the Cutie Mark Crusaders, 20 years older. The penalty for what they did is death. But can she bring herself to kill her final connection to her old world?
A AU fic based on the idea that Twilight didn’t give in to Tirek’s deal, and Tirek consequently killed Twilight’s friends and allowed the princesses to starve to death in Tartarus, this story reminded me somewhat of a story with a very similar premise, but with a much less assertive Twilight. Unfortunately, here, I didn’t really feel like Twilight’s actions made a whole lot of sense, and her final decision towards the Crusaders, while presented as being more merciful, didn’t really end up feeling that way. The fact that Twilight apparently decided to disregard all her lessons about friendship and mercy here just didn’t sit right with me, especially given that she knows that what is going on is messed up, and things could be better, and she still does nothing.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
All the Time in the World
by Adda le Blue
Romance, Adventure
7,463 wordsEverypony knows that the future is predestined; the very existence of cutie marks proves it. Still, Minuette isn't so sure that she has to make the same mistakes twice.
Two ponies look to the future, and all the while one looks back to the present.
Why I added it: Minds Eye reviewed it, and I’m a sucker for time travel.
Review
Minuette and Doctor Whooves have perfected time travel. Minuette gets to act as the guinea pig – travelling fifty years into the future for three days, then returning to the present. But when Minuette gets to the future, the Doctor is dead and his child isn’t hers, but Derpy’s.
Minuette doesn’t like this idea, so decides to change it, by going back and making a different choice in the past. But every time she tries, she seems to be back where she started, with only an echo to guide her…
A story about time travel, this story features Minuette travelling into the future to try and make things different, but every time. It isn’t right, and things are still messed up. Minuette needs to figure out how to tell the Doctor that she loves him in the right way for everything to come out alright…
I liked the idea behind this story, but it was kind of confusing; I was never quite sure just how much Minuette remembered across the iterations, and ultimately, in the end, while the story paid off reasonably well, I was never really all that enthusiastic about it – the story focused very heavily on actions, but in the end, I never quite understood who Minuette or the Doctor were as people, and that made the connection between them not feel as important to me as it should have. I never really fully empathized with Minuette, and thus, her victory just didn’t feel sweet enough because, while it is clear that she loves the Doctor, it was never quite clear to me why.
Recommendation: Time Travel fans might enjoy this, but it didn’t quite sell itself to me emotionally as well as I would have liked.
Chuckle
by Obselesence
Slice of Life
1,042 wordsPinkie Pie is ready for a brand new day.
Why I added it: Obs is a good writer.
Review
This is probably the longest thousand word story I’ve ever read. The lines are all very laconic (save a single line from Rarity most of the way through the story) as we see things Pinkie Pie thinks, says, and does in as few words as possible.
While the idea behind this story was fairly decent, I think I’ve read it before a number of times, and consequently, I figured out what the story was about from nothing more than the title, summary, and cover, and the third line of the story pretty much told me what it was going to be about.
This greatly diminished the impact of the end of the story for me; rather similar to graves fics, when you know where the story is going from the start, the rest of it has to carry a lot more weight.
If I had a major complaint about the story other than its obviousness, it was that Rarity’s line – which was given a great deal of significance – just wasn’t that strong. I get why it is there, and it did communicate the idea that it did, but it was kind of rambly, and was all the more so given the nature of the story as a whole.
That being said, this story did do one thing very well: communicate a great deal with a very, very small number of words. This story felt like it covered a lot of ground, and yet was only a thousand words long. It contained a lot of individual thoughts in its various laconic sentences, and it made excellent use of the power of punctuation – Pinkie Pie’s reaction to her friends, punctuating their names with exclamation marks, did a good job of communicating her enthusiasm for seeing them, and set them apart from everyone else in Ponyville. On the whole, the novelty of the formatting of the piece probably pushed this over the edge for me into being interesting.
Recommendation: Worth Reading, especially if you want to see an example of laconic writing, but if you see the twist coming, you may not be all that excited by it.
Summary
Temporal Irregu-Rarity by Pineta
Not Recommended
Sleeping Your Way to the Top by –TGM–
Not Recommended
Goodbye, Crusaders by HalfTangible
Not Recommended
All the Time in the World by Adda Le Blue
Not Recommended
Chuckle by Obselesence
Worth Reading
And there we go! I’m likely to be distracted with the writeoff for the next few days, but I have some review sets partway done, so there might be something more coming out this weekend.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – Important: 78
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – High Priority: 329
Number of stories listed as Read It Later: 1651
Will I ever make a story that gains your approval, TD senpai?
Thanks for the review!
Ah man, I wanted Sleeping Your Way to be good. :(
So, am I crazy, or did someone else write a story with a very similar presence to Goodbye, Crusaders? Grimdark future after Twilight fails to stop Tirek, CMCs leading a rebellion of ponies who blame her for everything and think she's a tyrant? Was that a thing?
3354541 I remember that too, but I can't recall its name.
3354541
3354556 Yup. Sorry I don't recall the name either. Not only that but I'm pretty sure TD reviewed it too.
3354541
3354556
3354580
It was Tyrant by PaulAsaran.
3354537
Wither wasn't bad, it just wasn't really where I wanted to recommend it to other people.
And you're welcome for the review. You'll probably get more of them as you keep making the featured story box.
Hope you do keep writing.
Shame, some of those concepts sounded interesting.
3354541
And yes, I wanted it to be better than it was as well, especially given I've had similar ideas myself (though as it turns out, they weren't actually very similar to what was actually written).
3354597
That's why I read them!
What is this writeoff you speak of? And which you have spoken of in past review posts?
3355070
The Writeoff Association runs a monthly contest. This month is a short story contest; we have to write a 2000-8000 word short story in 3 days based on a prompt (in this month's case, "Distant Shores"). We presently have about 2 days left.
It is open to the public, so you're free to join in if you'd like.
Thanks for the review. Always nice to get another story on the TD Not Recommended list. Plenty of good company there. And, who knows, maybe my next one will make the next level.
3355227
Well, its not like you haven't written stuff I liked.
3354590
Ohyeah o.o
So how does it stack up, concept-wise? :B
3355439
Tyrant was the better of the two, I think.
Tell me more.
3355957
It was The Terribly Taxing Tribulations of Twilight Sparkle by Blueshift.
My god, you don't recommend anything!!!
3356704
It was once said that the best thing about following my reviews is that you never have to read anything.
That said, if you're looking for posts which are nothing but recommendations, these five posts are nothing but recommended and highly recommended stories:
Recommended Story Reviews 1
Recommended Story Reviews 2
Recommended Story Reviews 3
Recommended Story Reviews 4
Recommended Story Reviews 5
You can also look at my Fifteen Stories You Should Read and Highly Recommended stories shelf.
3356726
Okay, thank you!