Read It Later Reviews #35 – Luna’s Lottery Lunacy, Fractured Sunlight, The Lost Place, Monsters, Trial by Flower · 10:20pm Oct 30th, 2015
I always feel as though I waste far too much of my time on frivolous things – primarily, watching the news. I think, this weekend, I will try to avoid the news – try to avoid stupid, frivolous, wasteful things, and actually try and do things that make me feel good in the long term, instead of fritter away my time.
We’ll see if I can succeed.
Today’s stories:
Luna’s Lottery Lunacy by Estee
Fractured Sunlight by Oroboro
The Lost Place by Martian
Monsters by RarityEQM
Trial by Flower by AugieDog
Luna’s Lottery Lunacy
by Estee
Slice of Life
18,885 wordsAfter Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns runs out of repair money and none can be found in Equestria's budget, Luna invents a means to raise the funds. Now if she can just keep it from destroying the nation's economy...
Why I added it: I’m a gambling man dragon.
Review
The School for Gifted Unicorns has been severely damaged (again) by the students, and there isn’t space in the budget to repair the buildings.
Neither Luna nor Celestia have any idea of how to pay for it – raising taxes would create protests from the citizenry at favoring the chosen unicorns who go to the school, the alumni are apparently loathe to donate, and the budget is stretched thin after the changeling invasion.
And so Luna hatches a plan. Nopony can complain about a lottery, right? It seems simple enough – the state keeps a small fraction of it, and gives it to the school, while the rest goes to the winner.
All so easy…
…until Luna discovers that with the promise of massive riches, ponies have gone mad for lottery tickets, and many ponies are spending as much or more than they can afford on them – and the poorest ponies tend to spend the most.
She’s scared she’s going to ruin innumerable ponies’ lives, and she needs to come up with some way to stop this disaster from unfolding. But, how?
Gambling ruins lives, kids.
This story features a lot of self-doubt from Luna, as well as her having to directly face the consequences of legalized gambling of this sort, and understand the unpleasant patterns it can create. Ponies went crazy over the lottery tickets, and while it was exaggerated compared to real-world events, it can certainly damage peoples’ lives.
On the whole, this was a reasonably interesting story which reflects some of the darker real-life aspects of the real-world lottery. And while it is exaggerated for effect, all of the events being at their worst, and coming down on Luna all at once, make her legitimately fear for what she unleashed. Seeing Luna’s self-doubt – and eventual decision about how to resolve the issue – was a decent enough ride, and while the story is nearly 20,000 words, and feels perhaps longer than it needed to be, I still enjoyed it on the whole.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Fractured Sunlight
by Oroboro
Sex, Romance, Sad, Slice of Life, Human
30,048 wordsWhen Twilight Sparkle was just a kid, her best friend was a girl named Sunset Shimmer. Though their friendship had a bit of a rocky start, they quickly became inseparable, no matter how much everyone thought of them as ‘weird’. They were there for each other.
Were.
Years after the tragic accident that tore them apart, Twilight is determined to move on from her loss, and she sets off on an independent research project to investigate the strange happenings at Canterlot High. Little does she know that she will soon come face to face with what appears to be a literal ghost from her past.
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue, and it is always nice to see stuff from people I follow in the queue.
Review
Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer were best friends. Sunset Shimmer always had trouble with authority, while Twilight was the good kid, but they were both weirdos.
And then Sunset Shimmer fell off a cliff and died while Twilight was helpless to save her.
Six years later, Twilight is off investigating Canterlot High, and accidentally-on-purpose bumps into Applejack to get herself a guide. When introduced to the circle of friends, they all act a bit strangely…
But that’s nothing compared to Twilight’s reaction when Sunset Shimmer shows up.
The story of the human-world Twilight Sparkle wanting to study the human equivalents of the main six and Sunset Shimmer, as well as of said Twilight Sparkle getting over the loss of her Sunset Shimmer and finally make friends again, this story held some amount of promise at the get-go, but as I went further and further through the story, I realized something:
I wasn’t really all that engaged.
The story is very slow-paced – it is over 30,000 words in at this point, and yet, I still don’t really feel like the story’s plot ever took off. Human Twilight found out very early on what was going on, and human Twilight was readily accepted by the group, even if she is kind of a jerk… but I just don’t really feel any real sense of tension to the story. I already know the full story of what is going on between worlds, and that Equestrian magic is real, so there’s little sense of discovery there, and human Twilight Sparkle’s own feelings were pretty clear from the first couple chapters, without anything really exciting or compelling. The story is of someone who is kind of cold opening up to others, but there’s not really much to compel me to keep reading – the premise was interesting enough, but I couldn’t really buy into some of the more emotional scenes’ drama and crying, and just don’t feel like the story is really directed in accomplishing something.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Lost Place
by Martian
Slice of Life
3,813 wordsThe most important day of her young life, the hardest challenge she'd have to face, and she failed... or had she? The thunderous sound, the dazzling light, the surge of magic... then she wakes up in a place bereft of all light and shape and sound, alone...
Sometimes, it just takes a spark to rekindle the light.
Why I added it: Present Perfect recommended it.
Review
Twilight wanders around a mental void as power overwhelms her young body during the course of her test. And then, she decides, there needs to be some light, and using her understanding of magic, surrounds herself in it, and finds herself in a field of stars – a field of stars long abandoned by their master, a field where the dreams of all ponykind can be accessed.
I can see why Present Perfect was impressed with this piece, as it paints the sky with stars and throws Twilight into a strange, otherworldly place where she has a conversation with a not-crazy Luna, and implies that Twilight’s presence here plants the seed of Luna’s eventual escape, but there’s not a whole lot here that actually engaged me. Maybe it is just really hard for me to be impressed by voids and realms of stars, maybe I’ve heard Luna’s sob story be retold one too many times, but it just didn’t do it for me here, and while the whole piece was deeply steeped in magic, it just… didn’t connect with me emotionally. Maybe it was knowledge of the outcome robbing me of wonder, or maybe it was just that I’ve seen this sort of thing too many times before, but I wasn’t thrilled.
Recommendation: Watch the PMV that inspired it:
Monsters
by RarityEQM
Sad, Slice of Life
1,575 wordsDiamond Tiara spends almost every night listening to monsters, and almost every night, Diamond Tiara wishes they were only in her imagination.
Why I added it: The Royal Guard Queue.
Review
Diamond Tiara listens to her parents scream at each other after they come home from a party.
This should be a piece of original fiction; it doesn't really make any use of the characters from the show, and it gains nothing from applying their names to the characters in this piece.
The biggest problem, though, is that the story is clichéd. Her parents have the standard generic "bad parents" complaint - one is a workaholic and the other is an alcoholic. The story is short and does what it does decently enough, but it is nothing I haven't seen many times before.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Trial by Flower
by AugieDog
Romance, Adventure
5,662 wordsBeing an up-and-coming business pony's not easy—Carob knew that when he opened his plant nursery in his hometown of Ponyville. But since the local librarian became a princess, he's found it much more difficult to focus on, well, on just about anything other than her...
Why I added it: AugieDog is a good writer.
Review
Carob has a crush on Twilight Sparkle.
Fluttershy has a crush on Carob.
And Applejack thinks Locust Bean is bad at his job, being the third - or fourth - most successful (read - not very successful) horticulturalist in Ponyville.
But that doesn't stop him of being proud of his work! Even if he isn't very good at it, judging by Applejack's problem.
Or by his inability to remember Fluttershy's name, despite her being a regular customer. A surprisingly regular customer.
But when a bunch of leafy monsters invade the town, he wants to help. After all, he can impress Princess Twilight like that, right?
This was a fairly decent piece as far as its sort of adventure aspects go – the protagonist is eager to help, willing to a fault, and kind of a dope, helping but also screwing things up in his attempt to impress. The actual threat was reasonable enough, and the solution felt suitably silly but still reasonable.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really bring myself to like this story for one reason: I just didn't like the protagonist, something which is very likely to determine whether or not you like this piece, seeing as a central aspect of the story is shipping him with a mane six cast member. While his actions are understandable, and indeed, he feels like a real person... I didn't really like him as a person, and he felt like kind of a loser and a bit of a jerk. And while maybe that was the intent to some extent, the ending of the story suggests that I should have been cheering for him, but in truth, throughout the story, I was cheering against him, which is never a good thing for a primary love interest.
Recommendation: If overly helpful characters getting the girl bothers you, you might be bugged by this, but if not, it might be up your alley.
Summary
Luna’s Lottery Lunacy by Estee
Worth Reading
Fractured Sunlight by Oroboro
Not Recommended
The Lost Place by Martian
Not Recommended
Monsters by RarityEQM
Not Recommended
Trial by Flower by AugieDog
Not Recommended
According to Google’s costume trends, Rainbow Dash is the 181st most popular costume this year – none of the other ponies made the top 500, possibly due to them splitting the vote between them.
Still, if you do see anyone dressed as a pony, be sure to give them extra candy.
They aren’t getting any extra from me if they go as the Equestria Girls version, though. :V
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 87
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 355
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1698
I notice that a lot of stories inspired by music tend to translate their inspiration too literally. The strength of music is its fluidity and emotion. Music doesn't need logic or verisimilitude to be engaging. Fiction that takes cues from music often forgets this in translation; it follows the idea of the music too literally, and thus fails as a narrative.
This also reminds me that I need to a blog post about child abuse and adoption. Almost every exploration of either topic is lazy and cliched, and a lot of that comes from the extreme standardization of every portrayal. I suppose part of it might be the way fanfiction is often inspired by common fandom memes--and both child abuse and adoption are fandom memes seven times over with different characters--but this is even true of original fiction.
is that double r.
It's a sad reflection on the state of journalism in the US that the news is stupid, frivolous and wasteful when compared to stories about magical horses.
3508447 I dunno. Journalism or not, do you really need to be informed about stuff that doesn't concern or affect you in the least? Who cares what some random politician said about a local car crash or something. Unless you're into politics, but that's a different matter.
Important news does come up sometimes, but very seldom. As in, maybe there's one or two things a month which happen in the world which are actually relevant to you, at most. (Again, not counting specialised interests because you won't be looking for those in the general news anyway.) Whereas news channels put out 5-20+ stories a day.
Pony words, on the other hand, are entertaining, if also mostly useless. That is their advantage over irrelevant and boring news.
Did you purposefully get the character's name wrong in that last one? <.<
3508447
3508496
This. News is actually entertainment masquerading as something important; most news is actually utterly meaningless and a waste of time to consume because it doesn't actually improve your well-being or significantly impact your life one bit. This isn't true of everyone, of course, but for most people, most news doesn't matter one bit.
I'm hard-pressed to think of a single news story this month that impacted my life personally. The only news story this year which probably impacted my life in any significant way was the legalization of gay marriage, but even that is more or less a mark in a long-term, ongoing trend towards greater acceptance of gays. And it only barely impacted me at all because it mostly just means that it is easier to write about gays and the country is freer than it was before.
3508501
Poor Locust Bean never gets any respect.
3508545
My aim:
Was to make the character something like his namesake--carob has never tasted like chocolate to me no matter how many authority figures of my youth told me it did. Perhaps he had too much locust and not enough bean for you?
Mike
LLL features what is easily my favorite exploration of ponies as a herd species.
3508496
3508527
I'm definitely in agreement with you two. Even though people might argue otherwise, people follow the news primarily entertainment purposes, and the news networks know this. There aren't that many important events that one needs to know about (and usually those events are in the local news, not the national news), and knowledge of long term trends is more important than any "breaking" news. It's definitely the case that the media "invents" stories so that they have something to for the 24-hour news stations to discuss, so what ends up on air most of the time is stupid, frivolous and wasteful.
At its best, the news provides a vehicle to explore, consider, and discuss our core values and beliefs. Fortunately, literature can also serve these purposes—even pony fiction (e.g. Estee's story probably provides a much deeper conversation about the value of gambling to society than Chris Christie's non-answer to a question about sports betting in last night's GOP debate).
A Royal Guard question:
I submitted "Trial by Flower" to the group three months ago and haven't heard anything about it since. Can I assume that your "Not Recommended" here means that it's been rejected? Or is it still in the works somewhere?
Mike, Wondering
3610225
It has not been approved/rejected yet.
FYI, unlike Equestria Daily, you don't have to have no stories in queue to submit another one to us, so if you were waiting to submit something else, you don't have to.
But yeah, we're kind of... slow. At present we have 109 stories in our queue. Activity was kind of low for the last couple weeks, but picked up a bit in the last few days. But yeah, we haven't been working through stuff at as high of a speed as we'd like; glancing at our queue, we clear about one story every 24 hours on average. At present we have 32 stories which have at least one decision on them, and 77 that have no decisions on them.
Sorry for the long wait.
3610252
Thanks for the info!
Wrapping up this "Game of Hearts" romance thing I'm currently writing reminded me of this story, so I thought I'd check its status. No hurry, though, no hurry.
Mike Again