Read It Later Reviews #37 – More Than Dreams, Love Twiangles, Marble Madness, Talking to Rocks, Quoth the Raven · 10:34pm Nov 20th, 2015
Ah, procrastination, my old foe, returned to bite me with a vengeance today. Annoyed with myself for not getting anything done, I decided to focus on one thing I could do – read stories, and review them, and maybe get my own creative juices flowing.
It only sort of worked. But I did find some stuff I liked, so the day wasn’t a total loss.
Today’s stories:
More Than Dreams by Minds Eye
Love Twiangles by Oroboro
Marble Madness by Twinkletail
Talking to Rocks by SPark
Quoth the Raven by KitsuneRisu
More Than Dreams
by Minds Eye
Drama, Romance
8,996 wordsTrust is a funny thing.
Why hadn't she trusted her parents? Her brother? Her sister-in-law?
Why was she so afraid to tell them the truth?
Why couldn't she just tell them that she loved mares? Loved Rainbow Dash?
Fear is a funny thing.
Why I added it: I read it previously.
Review
Twilight and Rainbow Dash go to visit Twilight’s parents so that Twilight can come out to them and tell them that she’s dating Rainbow Dash.
Little did she expect Shining Armor and Cadance to be there.
Twilight’s family clearly loves her. So why is Twilight so afraid? Does she really have anything to worry about?
Fundamentally, this is a coming out story, and it basically hits all the points you would expect such a story to hit – the fear of the person in question, worries by family members, family members who are upset not because the person is gay but because they didn’t trust them enough to tell them before they started dating a snarky blue pegasus…
While this might be very by the numbers, and kind of schmaltzy, there’s a reason clichés exist, and this story, while cliché, is also enjoyable for what it is. It isn’t something that you’ve never seen before, but it executes what you’ve seen before pretty well, and in a way that is engaging enough to see the reader through to the end.
Recommendation: Worth reading if you like schmaltz and don’t mind clichés.
Love Twiangles
by Oroboro
Sex, Comedy, Equestria Girls, Romance
6,750 words"My name is Sunset Shimmer, and there are two Twilight Sparkles who are both madly in love with me. Please help."
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue.
Review
Twilight Sparkle asks out Sunset Shimmer.
So Sunset Shimmer decides to write to Princess Twilight Sparkle for advice.
Too bad Princess Twilight Sparkle is already at her house by the time she gets home. And she has something to tell Sunset as well…
This story really wasn’t very good at first; the overall setup felt forced, plastic, and cliché, and the Twilights seemed to be suffering from a bad case of alien brain worms. Frankly, it bored me.
But as it passes the halfway point, it transitions from drama to comedy as Sunset’s friends prove thoroughly unhelpful, and the two Twilights encounter each other and decide to settle things once and for all, much to Sunset’s dismay.
Recommendation: You’re probably here for the second half of the story, so the real question is whether you’re willing to sit through the first half while waiting for the thing to actually get funny.
Marble Madness
by Twinkletail
Romance
3,077 wordsAfter the events of the first Apple/Pie Hearth's Warming celebration, two ponies wish to spend a little time getting to know each other better.
Why I added it: Research for a MarbleMac story.
Review
Big Mac has a crush on Marble Pie, but he’s no good at talking to people, especially not mares. He thinks there might be something there – she is a mare of few words, and awfully cute – but he just doesn’t know how to go about talking about it.
Then Pinkie Pie tells them that they both want to bid each other Happy Hearth’s Warming, and they go along with it.
Then Pinkie Pie encourages Marble to go show Big Mac her rock collection.
In her room upstairs.
Alone.
Not so sure about the E rating for this given the implied sexytimes, though given that The Lion King managed to get away with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”, wherein the male lead is lying naked on top of his love interest while romantic music plays, I guess I might be able to forgive it.
Overall, this was “okay”, but it drug at the start. The prose wasn’t terribly engrossing, and the story contains lots of prose in the form of Big Mac thinking about stuff. It didn’t really pick up until Pinkie Pie intervened and made the rock collection suggestion, which was halfway through the story. The ending was kind of amusing, and Marble Pie had one particularly good line (in fact, that was just about her only “real” line), but she got very little character otherwise.
Ultimately, the ending was decent enough, but I’m not sure if the rest of it really sold itself to me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Talking to Rocks
by SPark
Romance, Slice of Life
2,020 wordsEver since visiting the Pie farm, Big Macintosh has had rocks on his mind.
Why I added it: Research for a MarbleMac story.
Review
Big Mac thinks about rocks, and about talking to rocks, and about how farming rocks works.
Then he goes off to the Pie family farm to find out if he can talk to rocks.
This story was reasonably clever, and was nicely written; the prose was reasonably pleasing to read, and Big Mac contemplating issues of world building kept the reader engaged through to the end, when it became clear just what rock he really wanted to talk to.
And I really liked that idea. Too bad that the Romance tag and the cover image gave away the fact that he was most interested in Marble. And I think that kind of hit my appreciation for the story, as it is otherwise very understated.
Still, I can’t say that I didn’t get through it and have reasonably good feelings about it, and it was short enough that it didn’t overstay its welcome.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Quoth the Raven
by KitsuneRisu
Drama
12,942 wordsMoonlight Raven doesn't date much. As a dark mistress of the night, she often finds that others cannot comprehend her mysterious nature and her unfathomable magical powers, poor mortal fools that they are. Besides, her loving sister, Sunshine Smiles, is the only real friend she needs. But when Sunshine sets her up on a date with none other than Maud Pie, the only pony in Equestria more mysterious than she is, Raven finds herself having to do some serious self-evaluation.
Why I added it: KitsuneRisu is a good writer, and this was in the Royal Guard queue.
Review
Moonlight Raven steeled herself with a fortifying breath.
She had been standing in front of Bella Nox for a good fifteen minutes, doing nothing but watch the figure sitting at a table in the far corner of the eatery floor. She stared through the well-polished window walls, thoroughly ignoring the couple sitting just beyond the glass who had been giving her odd looks in an effort to get her to move away and let them eat in peace.
The figure she was watching had not moved a single inch since Raven had arrived, and Raven had not moved a single inch since arriving.
It wasn’t like her to be so nervous. In fact, she prided herself in being an ‘emotionless husk of the soul, bereft of all ponydom’, as she described herself in her twenty-page long epic free-verse poem about the consciousness of being and also small hamsters. It was titled The Insufferable Encumbrance of Fluffy Animals and no one was allowed to read it ever on penalty of having their eyes sucked out by frivolous wind demons.
She wondered, thoroughly – going against her habit of avoiding deep and perilous thoughts – if there were perhaps some reason for her jitters. But she easily came to the conclusion that they were merely the effects of the 0th Dimensional Ripples that were currently passing through the syzygy of the third and eighth Baroque Stars right above Canterlot at that very moment, and said effects would last for the exact duration that she was at the restaurant.
That must be it.
Her home-made astrology charts were never wrong.
Moonlight Raven finally looked down at the note held tightly against her bosom, peeling it away from all the perspiration that had started to warp the thick card.
It was a decorated square given to her by Sunshine Smiles, her sister, who was not here today and for good reason. As the card detailed, this was to be a one-on-one; a ménage-à-deux; a pairing of flavours.
And, no: it wasn’t a date.
Moonlight Raven had insisted her sister not call it that; it was an activity so unbefitting a creature of the night such as herself. So, as it was written on the card, it was merely a ‘So, I know you don’t have many friends, like you know, who share the same kind of interests as you? So I hope you don’t mind that I asked that nice designer lady from the other day who sold us those pretty princess dresses. I mean, she’s an artist and artists usually know a bunch of dark weirdos, right? So she asked her friend and she asked her sister, and now you should totally meet this girl because apparently she’s as dark and broody as you are and I’m sure you girls will click and OMC totally tell me how it goes afterward, okay? Or bring her home or something! Her name is Maud Pie and she looks like this (look at the picture!) and also can you please bring back some milk? I ran out and had to use OJ with my cereal and now I have a tummyache.’
If anything, it was succinct.
Also the borders had been filled in painstakingly with flowers and all the periods were smiley faces.
You might think from the above that Moonlight Raven is a goth. And she is. But it goes well beyond the normal goth stuff, and into the realm of power fantasy, where she fantasizes about being a terrible vampire queen, an agent of the darkness, the last cleric of Nightmare Moon, and the heir to the Lunar Throne (once Luna gets tired of ruling and retires, of course).
But ultimately, she’s a loser otaku. She lives in her personal fantasy world and pushes others away because she’s scared of letting anyone in, scared of being hurt. It is easy to play pretend, to pretend like you have control over your life, over others, when you don’t. Raven knows she doesn’t really have any magical powers, any mystical arts. She knows, deep down inside, that she’s a normal pony.
And that terrifies her, because if she isn’t a vampiric queen who is an acolyte of darkness and who consorts with demons, then she’s just a kind of sad, lonely pony with no friends but her sister and nothing really going for her. Why would anyone even WANT to be around just plain old Raven?
Maud, on the other hand, is Maud. But, if you did a very poor job of describing a goth, you might end up with something like Maud – emotionless, flat, rocklike.
So, when Raven’s cheerful sister talks with Rarity about a fitting for a dress, and they start talking about ponies they know, Rarity, via Pinkie Pie, sets Maud up on a blind date with Raven.
This story is labelled a romance, but while the two ponies are ostensibly out on a date, the story is really a drama more than it is anything else – while the events of the story might be mundane, Raven’s emotional journey is anything but, and as she struggles to impress Maud, we see both flashes of the past, and what made Raven behave the way she does, intermingled with the present, as Maud, completely unmoved by Raven’s strangeness, manages to navigate her way through the evening and ask Armor Piercing Questions, while her impassivity makes Raven question the very premise of how she thinks other ponies operate. There is no real romance here to speak of.
It is also labelled a comedy, but while it is funny at first, the more we learn about Raven, the sadder it becomes.
This story is strange, but I have to say that I liked it a fair bit; Raven was a compelling character, and the overall course of the evening – and Raven’s struggle with being herself – worked well. The characters were voiced evocatively, and Raven’s fantasies were entertaining enough even as they broke against the wall that is Maud Pie.
If I had a complaint, it was that the very final scene wasn’t quite as strong as I would have liked for it to be; I think that the idea behind it wasn’t bad, but I have to wonder if it might have been better if it wasn’t there at all.
Recommendation: Recommended.
Summary
More Than Dreams by Minds Eye
Worth Reading
Love Twiangles by Oroboro
Not Recommended
Marble Madness by Twinkletail
Not Recommended
Talking to Rocks by SPark
Worth Reading
Quoth the Raven by KitsuneRisu
Recommended
Extro
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 91
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 374
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1725
